


Reverie

by PinnedCicada



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Canon Compliant, Claustrophobia, Dissociation, Gen, Night Terrors, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 16:59:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17471411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinnedCicada/pseuds/PinnedCicada
Summary: Amami has a nightmare, yet he wakes up in another hazy dream.





	Reverie

It felt like the glasses and the structure surrounding him were closing in. The seat being actually comfortable was a mockery, as his arms were uncomfortably tied on it and the more he struggled, the faster he went.

The car drove through a ramp and new scenery unfolded. Beautiful, breathtaking scenery - less of a road trip, and more like the interesting places he visited -, quickly destroyed by meteorites and fires.

He wanted it to stop, from the bottom of his heart and with all the strength he could muster. But he knew it couldn't be stopped. He had done nothing to deserve it, he hadn't shed a drop of blood, but there he was. A sacrifice, one he took under the very limited choices they had. All he could do was attempt to soothe his own panic and never break the same neutral face he had all throughout. He closed his eyes for a moment, focused on the onyx necklace and its weight over his sternum. It steadied his heartbeat.

There was a thundering sound, but it wasn't thunder; it was coming right in front of him and it was steadily approaching. He opened his eyes.

The car was driving much faster now and towards a huge boulder; spherical, polished, unnatural. Another reference, another mockery. He chuckled to himself; he knew well enough the bear was prone to make spectacles from people's deaths.

_(Spectacles, huh?)_

In face of death, the sudden change of his mind made sense. His arms felt less like his, tingling and then all feelings fading away. Same thing with the legs; he had no urge, no reason to trash against his restraints, and no need to be connected to the moment his body was to be shown as tribute. It was almost ritualistic, but he wasn't keen on being a part of the ritual.

He just stared blankly, thousand miles ahead, beyond the spherical rock and somewhere else entirely.

That must've probably been why he noticed the boulder moving away from the car in the last second, revealing a lamppost. _Just like my mother, then._

The car crashed onto it, its entire length thrown onto a post that barely did give in; unlike the car, and unlike the body inside and its final sacrifice for hope, head crushed nearly flat, neck drooped and torso hung and hollow like a ragdoll that in some moment was meant to be stuffed with organs and bones.

Despite the mangled corpse, he didn't feel a thing, and the last thing he thought was how odd the view got from the angle his neck twisted.

.

.

.

Then, he woke up.

Amami wasn't too much of a sweater, but there he was, clutching at sheets and feeling cold drops all through his neck. It was complete darkness, but he was sure his pillows were on the floor and so were all of the blankets. He decided beyond the haze of violently waking up that he must've trashed around a lot during sleep. Out of impulse, he went to check the clock, but there was no clock by the bed.

_Ah, yeah, I'm in the Academy. The killing game._

Instead, he reached for the dresser, and took his student handbook. 2 AM. About four hours of sleep and a nightmare that clearly wasn't like any other he's ever had; the catch was that he didn't remember it.

With the light of the handbook screen, he went out of bed, avoiding any of the mess he'd made, and turned the room light on. Looking around, he sighed. Maybe the fact he forgot his dream completely was for the best, but if any of his sweat and the condition of the sheets were an indication of something, was that for the night, he should go somewhere else.

In one blur of minutes, he organized his sheets over the bed, took one blanket and exited. Once outside, he still wasn't sure if he was actually awake. The sky wasn't majestic and sprawling beyond the cage; it felt like gouache, points of light spritzed all over with an old toothbrush in patterns that he should've recognized, but he didn't. He sat down just by the door to the dormitories, blanket wrapped around his body.

He watched the Exisals work over the buildings and the overgrown plants, and they too felt less dangerous. It was like an amusement park, and he was just an unimpressed kid watching the spectacle.

Spectacle. _Huh._

The word rolled over and over on the back of his mind, and he wasn't sure where to fit it anymore, so it just floated there, emerging every once in a while. It was probably his brain acting weird; he was in a dangerous situation, and no matter how much he was acquainted with them, he still had an unsurprisingly limited body. The haze was still there, but it'd be gone by the light of day.

He closed his eyes, clutching the onyx necklace with one hand and forcing himself to feel the breeze of the cool night air. The other hand extended in front of him once he forced his eyelids back open, testing the night sky. Moonlight reached his hands, and even the cold light faded to warm, following the shape of his palm and fingertips.

 _There, Rantarou. See? You're awake, you're alive._ There was a pause. Still not convinced, he closed the hand into a fist and opened it again. It didn't feel like the hand was _his_ ; it was like he ordered someone else to move it. He did it again, trying to focus on tendons moving, but even then he knew that was a stretch of a thing to look for.

Finally, he decided to make things easier for him to feel something, by digging nails deep into the palm, searching for a sharp sting of pain to ground him.

The pain was there, definitely, but it also didn't felt like his own. He did it again, a little deeper. Still nothing. And he stopped; there wasn't any point in going further than that. If he bled, that would be just another fact as equally removed from his perceptions. Instead, he brought his palm to his sight, looking at the small, fresh crescent shapes engraved onto it, none bleeding. At least they were there, a testament of an action of his.

He leaned his head back, letting his eyes glaze around everything that was happening, fighting the haze for now, avoiding giving in to it.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a RP turn that I just went waaay overboard with and ended up being a shortfic. W e l p,
> 
> Honestly, it's been a while since I have had a fic published. I always write and have ideas, but never end up publishing them. This is me, dipping my toes, trying to get more used to this.
> 
> Amami goes in that very special list of great but heavily underused characters that I hold close to my heart, and I hope I could add to the love with this tiny contribution. <3


End file.
